Figured I'd resurrect this thread since I'm just getting back into the hobby after a 10 year hiatus. I was always a White's guy, so I was sad to see that Covid played a role in them closing their doors earlier this year. I guess Tesoro called it quits a while back as well.

Anyway, I use White's V3i and XLT. Had a couple other White's models in the past as well. I just ordered a Garrett GTI 2500 Pro though, so I'm excited to get out there and see what it can do! Looks like a sweet detector.

Yep, they closed in June. I guess it was a combination of Covid, lack of motivation by the current owner (son of the founder), and some other stuff. They were definitely a giant in the industry. Hard to believe they're gone.

Fortunately, before they closed they set up 2 White's repair shops, one on each coast, so repairs should be easy for a while yet. I called the one up the other day and was relieved to hear that you can still update the original Spectra V3's to a V3i. The V3i was a later model that fixed some bugs and added some other things. Mine is on its way to them now.

I basically just stick to hunting coins. That said, if I were in an area that I thought had some good relics in it, I would go for anything.

Those are some awesome finds! I wish there were things like that around here. I'm a bit too far North to get civil war relics, and for that matter too far West to get the really early US coins.

It's both hardware and software. Some detectors have many compatible search coils, in different sizes and shapes, which allow for searching deeper or hunting in areas with a lot of trash. On the software side of things, some detectors offer multiple search frequencies, sometimes more than one at once. So you can identify items before you dig.

And then there are things like preset programs that you can choose from depending on what you want to hunt for. Many detectors allow you to change settings to create your own program.

There's other nice stuff as well. Like wireless headphone compatibility, transfer of programs from one detector to another, color displays, display graphs, etc. etc.

Each element has a freqency range that is best suited to allow the detector to find it, so that info is turned into something on the display. I think I read somewhere that gold was best found with a freqency somewhere around 40kHz. So if your detector is searching with 3 frequencies and one of them is going nuts on the display with your highest frequency (assuming that frequency is in the gold range), then there's a good chance that it's gold you're hitting. I guess that's the best way that I can explain it.

And data is also converted to display info showing the likely size of the object, which can further help you identify it before digging.